‘My Government Must Quit Twitter and Call Out Elon Musk’s Far-Right Hate’

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We’ve done defence. We now need to go on the offensive. 

With the far right marching in our streets, paid for by foreign billionaires and bolstered by Putin’s cyber-warfare machine, we cannot afford to sit back. This is not just a passing nuisance but a deliberate attempt to destabilise our democracy. 

I was one of the first Labour MPs to leave Twitter back last summer, when its owners’ obvious conflict of interest in being donor, administrator, and platform-turned-propaganda outlet owner became apparent. That was a basic defensive move to protect against a website which has become a highly-partial cesspit of misinformation and algorithmically-charged hate. 

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But we in the centre and on the left also need to get our own house in order. I hear and understand that the left need to be properly heard, and the frustration that their views have not been given enough weight by a government that has lost more voters to smaller left parties than even to Reform since last year, at least in my constituency. But now, more than ever, we must ourselves unite and stop indulging in conspiracy theories about Labour being captured by sinister forces when the truth is simpler: That the Party has been guided by people who wanted, above all, to make us electable again, with an analysis that, in 2024, was proven to be correct. Equally, the left must stop sounding like apologists for a broken migration system, as though it were acceptable to risk one’s life crossing the Channel on a dinghy. It is not.

This is a problem that must be fixed, for humanitarian reasons as well as social cohesion. But equally, we must be clear: this is not some orchestrated “invasion” as some would like us to believe. We must put ourselves in the shoes of those who, understandably, want to make the journey, fleeing home nations where their lives are, at worst, in danger or, at best, severely lacking in hope and opportunity. We must also remember that there is surely a reason they are choosing the UK as opposed to other European nations – perhaps due to family links, or for linguistic or historic reasons. And, finally, we must also be honest with ourselves that, at 0.1% of GDP, it is not the cost of migrant hotels that has broken our public services, but 14 years of Conservative austerity.

But we must also, as the far-right so often call for, call out scapegoating and blatant racism for what it is, and ensure that social media platforms provide the same protections. Vile, threatening racism didn’t suddenly become lawful because it’s spouted online, and what many people allow to pass them by on social media would be shocking to read in print, or hear from a family member or friend around the dinner table. 

UK Government departments would do well to recognise the same: that Twitter is not an impartial platform, nor, given its increasingly narrow user base, a place where our Government needs to be. But we must go further and root out these malign influences on our politics, tightening our rules on online transparency, the foreign funding of campaigns, and the regulation of disinformation.

And, now that Musk is out of the White House and openly backing an even more extreme version of Reform here at home, he no longer a public servant, just a deeply unpopular foreign extremist – and should be treated accordingly. So too should those marching in our streets under the banner of hate. They do not represent British values. They wrap themselves in the Union Jack or St George’s Cross, but debase it. And it falls to us, the majority, to unite and prove that they will not define our future.